Is it time to admit I have a problem? It may be time to admit I have a problem. I’ve struggled a lot with reading over the past 18 months of pandemic life (that’s a post for another day). But I have not slowed down on my book buying. No, on the contrary, I am trying to support all the bookstores I can, and more books than ever seem to find their way to me.
My current count of unread, owned books is 66. Two more will be arriving soon and then I really will be out of shelf space. I’ve got novels. I’ve got non-fiction. I’ve got at least four books related to Jane Austen culture in some way. There’s War and Peace AND Moby-Dick (help!). Mysteries, literary fiction, young adult, and more. Books I’ve had, without reading, for actual decades — the oldest a gift from a favourite high school teacher. Some have stuck around from the last time I attempted something like this.
I don’t want to die under a pile of books, so this begins my attempt to read all of these books, or as many as I can.
Here’s the full list in alphabetical order by author’s last name.
Selected Letters by Jane Austen
The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer
Mr. Darcy’s Guide to Courtship by Emily Brand
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
The Body by Bill Bryson
Surviving the White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Jane Welsh Carlyle and Her Victorian World by Kathy Chamberlain
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Mariana by Monica Dickens
Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, adapted by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
Maud by Melanie J. Fishbane
The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders
The Highland Witch by Susan Fletcher
Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser
The Body Under the Piano (Aggie Morton Mysteries) by Marthe Jocelyn
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
Mrs. England by Stacey Halls
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley
Mutiny on the Globe by Thomas Farel Heffernan
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
Bachelor Girl by Betsy Israel
White Negroes by Lauren Michele Jackson
Jane Was Here by Nicole Jacobsen and Devynn MacLennan
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
The Metal Heart by Caroline Lea
Word Origins by Anatoly Liberman
Bizarre Scotland by David Long
The Once and Future World by J.B. MacKinnon
Alchemy and Rose by Sarah Maine
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer
What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
There There by Tommy Orange
The Portable Dorothy Parker by… Dorothy Parker
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler
Set Me on Fire: A Poem for Every Feeling, edited by Ella Risbridger
The Barren Grounds by David Alexander Robertson
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson
The Jane Austen Handbook by Margaret Sullivan
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (on being halfway through, on being finished)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician by John Worthen
Kathleen Keenan 